A “space” of one’s own: identity and conflict in two Milan districts

Contemporary cities today present a rather complex urban structure: a multiform space difficult to classify, a mosaic of distinct fragments, sometimes agglomerated, each with its own shape, characteristics and populations. These are territories that constitute the “negative” of the city, they are empty spaces that often turn into urban waste, real enclaves. As we will be able to illustrate in the following paragraphs, the concept of periphery can no longer be synthesized in a single spatial dimension, but it connotes parts of cities and marginal human conditions. Peripheries represent, above all, a condition; they are marginal with respect to “powerful” areas where decision-making, cultural and economic activities are concentrated. The city loses its internal coherence and allows itself to be crossed by growing forms of inequality and social polarization.

Jane Jacobs (1961) wrote that cities could provide something for everyone, only because and only when everyone creates them. It is a formula that, on paper, highlights the vital link between equality and redistribution that the author connects to the physical spaces, interstices and streets of the American cities that she was observing, and places that were governed by economic and urban models, aimed at the production and reproduction of inequality.

It is a hypothesis that Richard Florida (2002) also proposes after having initially looked confidently at cities as a place dedicated to the rise of the creative class and spaces of possibility, oriented by the values of technology, talent and tolerance. In the recent “The new urban crisis” (Florida 2017) however, Florida argues that that model needs to be revised, because something has gone wrong with the redistribution of wealth.

As Florida argued, it is a geographical iniquity that affects the whole world: with 50 superstar cities where only 7% of the population lives and works, generating 40% of the world economy, and 40 mega-regions (18% of the population) generating 85% of innovation. However, it is also segregation: in the metropolis, gentrification has become "plutocratization", the prices of houses in some districts have risen out of all proportion and the less well-off have had to abandon them, speculators turn buildings into investments and houses are left empty. All this has decimated the middle class: because while the wages of some have risen out of all proportion, those in charge of essential services—education, personal care, transport, security—have stayed the same or decreased (Florida 2017).

The city of Milan, today more than ever, is part of this pattern (Colleoni et al. 2018). After the widespread disintegration of the industrial fabric that had characterized the city, the “moral capital” has been able to reinvent itself through a capacity to attract investments, processes and urban transformations, such as the development of the new areas of Santa Giulia, City Life, Piazza Gae Aulenti and Varesine-Porta Nuova. Between 2014 and 2019, GDP grew significantly in the metropolitan area, in contrast to the national average, and employment in the private sector increased to almost ten percentage points. According to the local Chamber of Commerce report (2020) in the Milan macro-area, in 2019, the growth in added value was 0.9%, a figure that was decidedly higher than the increase achieved both at national (+ 0.3%) and regional level (+ 0.4%).

The metropolitan city of Milan confirmed its hegemony, recording the same dynamics at the provincial level as the enlarged area (+ 0.9%).

At the same time, however, the Diocesan Observatory of Poverty and Resources of Caritas has seen an increase and worsening of metropolitan suffering. In 2018, the listening centres, which were the sources of the research sample, received 13.195 requests. The average number of requests per person increased from 2.8 in 2008 to 4 in recent years, demonstrating a more significant presence of multi-problematic situations of hardship; moreover, 30.7% of the people encountered have been using such services for more than five years and represent situations in which the condition of poverty has now become chronic (Caritas Ambrosiana 2018). To all these elements, it’s relevant to add the decimation of the middle class: because while the wages of some have risen disproportionately, those involved in essential services—education, personal care, transport, security—have decreased (Rapporto Eurispes 2020).

The article purposes a secondary analysis of data collected in a European research MARGIN: tackling insecurity in marginalized areas (*A. N° 653,005: May 2015–April 2017), a project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme.

The Margin project aims to coordinate and support public intervention in the field of (in) security by providing policymakers with high-quality tools for creating and evaluating strategies targeted at the reduction of insecurity among different demographic groups. The research was conducted in five European cities (Milan, Paris, London, Barcelona, Budapest) and was based on a triangulation of qualitative techniques including in-depth interviews, participant observation and focus groups. The details of the research design included the qualitative phase devoted to a process of qualitative data collection in 10 selected neighbourhoods and the corresponding analysis of 50 in-depth interviews, six months of participant observation and ten focus groups. The participating observation included 300 interviews with residents and city users in the districts studied and an uncovered observation of the daily life of the people under the study. The overall results of the research are available on the official report.² The criteria used to select the ten districts in the five European cities analyzed (Barcelona, Budapest, London, Milan and Paris) based on the definition of shared urban security within the project.

The analysis that follows concerns only the city of Milan and two neighbourhoods that significantly represent the above-described transformations. This article's purpose is a reflection on data collected in interviews and focus groups in two districts of Milan: Gratosoglio and the Rogoredo-Santa Giulia district (Fig. 1).

The secondary analysis was carried out on the material resulting from 60 interviews: 10 to privileged witnesses (representatives of law enforcement agencies, citizens' committees, NGOs and public service operators) and 60 to the population living in the two districts and city users and two focus groups (of six people each).³ The secondary analysis conducted wanted to answer new research questions with existing data. The objective was, therefore, to develop knowledge about how the configuration of the relationships between spaces and identity, with attention given to the conflicts between resident populations starting from data collected for different research purposes. If the Margin research focused on the identification and analysis of the dimensions of urban insecurity from a comparative perspective, the research question of this essay will focus on the study of new forms of conflict in urban interstices.

The research strategy used is that of case studies. Two districts of a metropolis have been studied without the pretension of producing generalizable conclusions. The objective is to describe in-depth two urban suburbs to understand the redefinition of the physical boundaries of a city and the emergence of new spaces.

In recent years, several authors (Castells 1975, 2004; Sassen 2001, 2006, 2014) have highlighted how the processes related to globalization have not only changed the economic, political, social and cultural life of cities, but also how they have transformed their geographical configurations. In contemporary cities, there no longer seems to be a single and coherent logic underpinning spatial and temporal processes; the relationships between the city centre and the suburbs are changing, or rather they tend to blur the boundaries accustomed to considering, distinguishing between the city centre and the suburbs. In urban contexts, while on the one hand the idea of a city centre has not been definitively erased, on the other hand, the centre is expanding, and it is multiplying into innumerable centres (business centres, shopping centres, spaces for public entertainment that spring up beyond the traditional urban area in the suburbs), (Castells 2004). As a result, the traditional concept of the suburbs, i.e. a closed cultural and social universe, a boundary to the established city, inhabited by minorities, characterized by a uniformity of economic, employment and cultural conditions and by problems of social integration, is no longer applicable. Rethinking the suburbs today means thinking of them as a heterogeneous territory, a sort of patchwork in which different populations live together, residential districts and areas of social housing, modern infrastructure and precarious and temporary settlements of migrants, interstitial spaces (Nyers 2018; Brighenti 2009; Lévy-Vroelant 2003). The interesting aspect, in this context of the transformation of the contemporary city, is the redefinition of the internal and external geography of the city's boundaries, understood as physical, political and symbolic mechanisms (Brighenti 2009; Rossi 2017). The social processes induced by globalization transform the forms of space and time in the city, modifying many of its fixed variables, such as central and suburban places. This phenomenon generates, on the one hand, an expansion on the territory of cities and consequently a redefinition of its fixed and linear borders; on the other hand, a recomposition of other borders far from their canonical layouts that reconfigure new, delineating spaces, bringing together people, cultures and identities (Castells 2008; Sassen 2001). The redefinition of the physical boundaries of the city, due to the urbanization processes induced by modernity, generates a series of interstitial spaces. Interstitial spaces can be a sort of “neglected spatiality” that we can conceive of as a liminal area that is alien to the prevailing urban rhythm, difficult to classify and characterized by degradation and by a temporary situation of social suspension waiting to be reconnected to the prevailing urban practices (Amin and Thrift 2002; Brighenti 2013; Turner 1967, 1969). Some authors have linked this situation of liminality, of territorial transition, to the so-called “in-between” spaces (Sennett 1991; Hajer and Reijndorp 2001; Shields 1991; Worpole and Knox 2007; Zukin 1991). These spaces are characterized by the degraded and marginal districts of contemporary cities, often abandoned by institutions, populated by social groups with different economic and social capital, language, ways of speaking and often in competition for the use of public spaces. It is difficult to classify such spaces due to the varied population that lives there and the differing settlement situations. However, we can identify two prevalent types: the first type of territory characterized by buildings/industrial or railway areas inhabited by a plurality of actors with lifestyles or routines that monopolize the space, practically excluding the possibility of others being able to benefit from it, with a material exclusion. These are the spaces that are being contested between a series of new urban populations that use them for multiple and diversified purposes. They are, indeed, also spaces in which a culturally homogeneous group of actors makes use of them in such a way that they are perceived by other urban actors as tending to exclude other uses and are therefore preferably avoided, with forms of exclusions based on perception of insecurity. The second type of space refers to an urban settlement of another era, whose importance both on a functional and symbolic level has taken on new meanings. In such a case, the encounter between old and new populations creates problems of communication between different urban cultures in terms of the ways of perceiving and using space. A unifying aspect of these new interstitial spaces comes from the fractures, albeit subtle, that exist between the inhabitants; fractures produced by the diversity of lifestyles, cultural codes, the type of use of the city and the ways of relating to other urban actors (Poli 2007; Rossi 2017). These city spaces, precisely because they take on different values and meanings, become contested places, often the scene of conflict between the inhabitants. Nevertheless, how is the relationship between space and resident populations structured? As Pierre Bourdieu states in his seminal work “The Weight of the World” (Bourdieu 2015), there are “difficult” places, unchosen social spaces, which bring together people who have no contact points, forcing them to cohabit “either in mutual ignorance and incomprehension or else in latent or open conflict—with all the suffering this entails”. (Bourdieu 2015: 187).

In the previous paragraph, we have seen how the social transformations of recent decades (processes of globalization and restructuring of the economic system, immigration, technological developments, increasing development of illegal drug markets, crises in the protection of the welfare state) have transformed both the structure and functioning of cities, reflecting on individuals, on their way of life, of interpreting social reality and of relating to others. The urban system is configured as an extensive network of interconnected spaces that have their strengths in urban nodes (Borja and Castells 2002). Cities become part of an urban system that no longer follows a logic of territorial continuity but is structured in the function of nodes (urban centres) and axes (flows of goods, people, capital and information) that connect them. In this context of change, the emerging phenomena of the city summarized in fragmentation, complexity, fluidity and flows, profoundly affect the relationship of continuity and significance between inhabitant and local populations (Harvey 1989; Sennett 1991; Bauman 1998; Castells 1996; Putnam 2000). As Sassen (2006) says, we are witnessing the multiplication of boundaries that isolate or interrupt the flow of communication and resources between the different areas that make up the contemporary city, creating new inequalities and disparities between the territories and the people who live there. In increasingly globalized cities, poverty, marginality, illegal drug addicts and consumers and difference are concentrated and sometimes segregated in suburbs or run-down neighbourhoods, ultimately creating intense social polarization in urban spaces where the rich are opposed to the poor, and the indigenous population is opposed to foreigners. New metropolitan models of socio-territorial organization emerge, replacing traditional forms of urban society, neighbourhood and community. The conformation of spaces strongly influences the identity of the inhabitants, just as social practices and relationships shape spaces (Simmel 1998). According to the Simmel concept, space is not considered as an objective fact, but as a condition of existence of social organizations, a property of society. Spatial forms are, therefore, those configurations of social relations that find their concretization in space. For this reason, we believe that the concept of the neighbourhood should not be given a priori, but represents space, the result of the interaction between different subjects and processes, in turn, conveyors and producers of different identities. An urban space, a “neighbourhood”, represents the stratification of different identities defined or imposed from the outside in relation to the images one has of that context.

Although some spatial conformations (the urban fabric, popular types of construction, the historical phases that led to its construction, etc..) can be identified and clearly defined, and often constitute the reference for the lives of the inhabitants or its visitors, a “neighbourhood” remains difficult to define. The urban spaces we consider (Gratosoglio and Rogoredo-Santa Giulia) are very uneven in their social composition, and this diversity arises not only between the inhabitants of the two urban contexts and the rest of the city but also between the inhabitants themselves. The research material collected in the “neighbourhoods” of Gratosoglio and Rogoredo-Santa Giulia shows that it is impossible to think of them as isolated and closed local communities based exclusively on endogenous social relations. Locally-based identities intersect with other identities. As one of the interviewees explains, the Rogoredo district is more reminiscent of a town than a metropolitan space:

I share the idea of a village because it is a neighbourhood that has a barrier from the rest of the city, consisting of the railway station, so it is closed as a neighbourhood. It is a lively neighbourhood that could be better lived because then you have the feeling of a place where people know each other a bit, where you create divisions, where some innovative tools such as social networks lead to make acquaintances that are sometimes more virtual and to take positions that are sometimes firmly held on specific topics while sitting on your sofa. (Foreigners school teacher, Rogoredo resident).

Social memory, historical identities, as well as urban practices developed in daily life, can represent other sources of meaning. The residential neighbourhood can be one of the multiple worlds of people's lives, where it is possible to choose whether and to what extent to participate in public life, to create social relations and to leave it if local conditions, interests and motivations are no longer present (Janowitz 1951). Moreover, it is widely known that settlement and housing patterns are often “imposed”in cities, which can then have an impact on the establishment of local urban identities. Dwelling may not be a choice, but it can be very much conditioned by urban situations and the dynamics of the real estate market. There are sections of the population that can afford to choose where to live and, as Savage says, “where you live therefore becomes an important identifier, probably the most important, of who you are. The selective process by which people decide to live in certain places and abandon others is at the heart of contemporary battles for social distinction” (Savage et al. 2005: 207). Living becomes an essential factor in the re-articulation of social identities and in the structuring of life opportunities for city dwellers.

This struggle is found in the words of a resident of Gratosoglio:

Most of the complaints we have come from the old residents of Gratosoglio concerning this type of social infiltration. It is an infiltration difficult to digest. It is undoubtedly not harmonious assimilation, a very strong clashing that manifests itself—this is one of the themes that we, as local police, face the most—and a whole series of illicit phenomena such as the occupation of the Aler areas. It happens of course with the garages under the towers, and, in general, the parking of caravans with the widespread phenomena of disrepair under the houses is a nucleus that requires energy because it has the fragility within it also for the type of population that it houses. For many, it is smoke and mirrors. (Local police officer n°2, Gratosoglio).

But even in the words of a Rogoredo interviewee:

We have seen that sometimes there have been difficulties of integration between Italians and non-EU citizens, there is often conflict. We noticed it in the redevelopment of Feltrinelli at 16; the famous houses have been practically renovated and reclaimed from asbestos—if I remember correctly—that it was present and, there, there are Italians, non-EU citizens, from any nation, Peruvian, Morocco, Egypt and so we also say the difficulty, often the conflict between the parts a committee has also been set up to deal with any conflicts that may arise between these people. (Local police officer n°2, Rogoredo).

The search for residential environments where one feels at ease, concerning specific habitats, generates a sort of “elective belonging” to the residential environment and new configurations of status recognizable by oneself and by others (Savage et al. 2005), and as a counterpart, the perception of living in ‘penalized spaces’ (Pétonnet, 1982). This phenomenon, which characterizes the residential area that is the subject of our analysis—Rogoredo Santa Giulia—highlights the process that Atkinson (2006) defines as “enclavism” of the medium–high population. The search for social homogeneity pushes the upper middle classes to look for “protected” housing dimensions, which are socially and culturally homogeneous and provide the illusion of living in a community (the gated communities). These traits can be found in Santa Giulia, which was also according to this point of view. The resulting risk is that the city will become a territory characterized by homogeneous enclaves of different types and with different levels of isolation (from gated communities to enclaves of disadvantaged social groups confined in degraded, penalized spaces).

A definition of the “right to the city” is offered by Lefebvre (1996), when he writes: “the right to the city manifests itself as a superior form of rights: the right to freedom, to individualization in socialization, to habitat and to inhabit. The right to the oeuvre, to participation and appropriation (clearly distinct from the right to property), are implied in the right to the city” (Lefebvre 1996: 173–174). Reflection moving from interviews with residents underline how it is as if the right to use had been exchanged with the right to property, expressed based on historical forms of belonging:

I say that although I have a personal position totally open to the theme of integration and reception of migrants, I believe that it was one of the most politically dismal choices in our neighbourhood that Casa Gialla (Yellow House). Apart from the way in which it was done: the population was not involved and had to face an experiment with the signing of a thirty-year contract—that is the thing—in the previous municipal administration; so, throwing it in a neighbourhood that, among other things, has great difficulty in absorbing such a presence, because it already has many other difficulties. (Local Priest, Gratosoglio).

According to the 2019 Censis⁴ report, local dynamics reflect a general sense of fatigue, and above all, what Bonomi has hailed as "the society of resentment" (Bonomi 2008). The report shows how people's expectations of their own economic conditions have changed. In 2008, according to Censis Conad report (2019) the year of the crisis, it was 19.6% who thought that their condition would improve and 20.8% who thought that the condition of others would improve. The most recent report shows how 69% of Italians are convinced that social mobility is blocked; 63.3% of the workers believe that in the future they will remain firm in the current socio-economic situation because it is difficult to climb the social ladder; 63.9% of entrepreneurs and freelancers instead fear the downward slide. The generational question, the social cost of pensions and the difficulties of employing young people are only some of the submerged currents of the conflict, which are, however, distorted on the battle table with the enemy. Poverty and migration, often combined, are the basis of the narration of the conflict in the neighbourhoods, cities and Italy in 2019.

Moreover, as Battistelli (2019) wrote, the conflict changed between industrial and post-industrial period: if the industrial period conflict was more gathered in the spaces of the production (the factory), in the post-industrial period, the conflict spreads, especially into spaces, both private and public ones.

The concept of “conflict” in this specific case applies Ralph Darhendorf definition. The author, in his classic “Towards a theory of social conflict” (1958), describes the social conflict briefly, as “the frictions between the rulers and the ruled in given social structural organizations” (Dahrendorf 1958: 173). This frictions can be seen in the two cases analyzed distinguishing the rulers and the ruled on precedence in the space: the ones who own a home (even if social housing apartments) and connected to the institutional system (politics, elections, welfare) are the rulers; the temporary “hovers” are the ruled, and the weakest presence in the conflict.

The essential approach of the structuralists, who recognize—each time—a habitus (Bourdieu 1977), a system/institution (Giddens 1979) and a correlation between practices and positioning (Bhaskar 1979) as a form that defines and determines interactions and places them in each space and in each time, can enrich these reflections, even if they mostly do not considered, however, the relevance of space and the geographical implications of these perspectives on social ties, and which forms of.

An interesting explanation can be found in Webber's reflections (Webber 1964:108–109): “the idea of community has been tied to the idea of place”. Although other conditions are associated with the community—including “sense of belongings”, a body of shared values, a system of social organization, and interdependency—spatial proximity continues to be considered a necessary condition. However, it is now becoming apparent that it is accessibility rather than the propinquity aspect of “place” that is a necessary condition. As accessibility becomes further freed from propinquity, cohabitation of a territorial place—whether it is a neighbourhood, a suburb, a metropolis, a region, or a nation—is becoming less important to the maintenance of social communities.

Although the phenomenon now appears as clearer in the definition of conflict, some authors argue that the differentiation of spaces has always followed systems of power, which produce and reproduce margins. As Ferguson said, “When we say marginal, we must always ask, marginal to what? But his question is difficult to answer. The place from which power is exercised is often a hidden place” (Ferguson 1990: 9). A power which can be similar to the process of brutalization (Laroche 2017; Mbembe 2020), which starts with the destruction of social ties and solidarity, continues with the exclusion of marginal groups (such as poor people and foreigners), from community and “enabling an everyday barbarism against them which eventually becomes generalized across society” (Hanafi 2020: 7).

Cohabitation establishes relationships of strength and develops the “right to the city”, often perceived as being related to homeownership, to the historicization of presence, and to the use of the neighbourhood itself:

I can say one thing, so then … the little wood is a problem for me, a big problem, but not because… The problem is significant, and it should not have been created. They left it on purpose, in the sense that it was needed, it was useful because in the time of Expo having a place away from Expo could be more convenient than having it somewhere else. A policeman said: “But Rogoredo where is it? Your fucking problem, because that is an area that's not monitored very much.” (Local committee member n°2).⁵

A problem located beyond the station, is the problem of drugs, of drug dealing of which you will be aware, let's say that much has been said about it also on television, it is a problem that creates more damage than a security problem, from my point of view, at least here, on the Rogoredo street and in school no, because they are the presence of drug addicts, of syringes, is a problem. (Social worker).

The informant referred to the broader risks of the presence of the drug market: not only an issue of security, but a sanitary risk, a social issue and a more complex phenomena, affecting boths, residents and consumers. A policeman exposed the broader picture of security and safety in the city, starting from the specific case, and showing off how, sometimes, these issues can be politically useful:

Look, politicians and citizens only care about petty crime. The former because it affects them directly, the latter because it is easier to find and put remedies in place. The problem here has been around for a long time, but we are not interested in children, who are also their victims, we try to understand what is behind it, but it is a struggle because the agents must be used in demonstrative actions to appease the fears of citizens. Have you heard more about the mafia? Do you think that we thought that mass actions were decisive? It was to give people the feeling that something was being done. It is like having a tumour and treating yourself with aspirin for a fever. That is not how you solve problems, but nobody is interested in the real problems of the city! (Policeman, Rogoredo).

Vulnerable people, such as drug buyers in the little wood of Rogoredo, also perceived the conflict:

But now I think the police and the Carabinieri⁶ are mistaken for these actions. They do not realize that we are going to be scattered all over the city. Why do they think that they only sell here? Only here it was more straightforward; it was like with cows, it is better if you keep them all in one fence. Furthermore, I say this as a user. Because I am harmless, but that one there (pointing to a guy who passes high and agitated) is dangerous, I imagine that my mum would be afraid of someone like that hanging around" (Heroin consumer).

A difficulty that is perceived and attributed both to social levelling:

Because socially, Gratosoglio is a neighbourhood that has been levelled to the bottom, based on devastating political choices here as well, in the sense that the families that find space in the neighbourhood are multi-problematic families. (Resident).

as well as to the choices of urban and social planning:

I think there is also a social concern about the distribution of certain realities, in my opinion, at a city level, I throw it out there, I know it is a bit utopian but I always have to say: instead of being so busy discussing "I'll take your house away or I won't take it away", I'm not talking about the allocations of public housing, I'm talking about widespread empty houses, that empty house that hasn't changed for five years, we could use it for something: housing four families, three families, two families, so as to spread in the fabric—otherwise we end up with pockets of real concentration, even a little 'imagined, even a little' real-life experience, with everything that comes with it and that we have also told each other now that they become counterproductive to know each other, to try to do things together, etc.. Some modern challenges should be faced together, that is, I want to say without hesitation: neglect, etc., we face it with those people, after which we face it in part with opposing factions, as well as not solving the modern challenges probably we won't solve this either. (Social activist, n°3, resident Rogoredo).

Aspirational desire, especially in the Santa Giulia district, separates projections and representations from proximity:

So, our vision was of the neighbourhood as represented by the masterplan of the designs, a neighbourhood that frankly left out a bit of Rogoredo and that we learnt later when we found ourselves here. I did not come here and many like me because Rogoredo was here, because San Martino was here, or because there was the City of 2000 (Città duemila). We came here because there was a major redevelopment project on an area that was to become—as they described it—a new centre (Local committee Santa Giulia member).

The potential distance and physical proximity in the two cases examined, regardless of the generational differences of the spaces, produce and reproduce a conflict based in public narratives on expectations and inequalities of material conditions, but, concretely, in a previous and more stable occupation of space, and somehow, the use of the space as a public one. The strong connection between private and public life of the margins in public spaces (the guests of Casa Gialla; the drug-addicted city-users of Rogoredo) transform the use of the space into a hegemonic one (Mouffe 2012), and force the conflict. In a way, the “misery of position” (Bourdieu 2015) is due not only on material value but also on the fragility of presence and permanence in space, which produces waste lives and metropolitan suffering (Stefanizzi and Verdolini 2019).

The transformation of cities into an increasingly complex metropolitan space has contributed to articulate the spatial structure of social inequalities in a more varied set of socially diverse areas, making the representation of social geography-based exclusively on the opposition between the centre and periphery obsolete (Mela 2006). In contemporary global cities, it is misleading to think of neighbourhoods as homogeneous entities because it is possible to identify different types of individuals in them, from the most highly marginalized to those on the edge of the poverty line, low-income workers, foreigners, groups linked to illegal activities and, in some cases, even those in a relatively affluent condition. According to Lefebvre's concept of heterotopia (2003) in the urban space, liminal, threshold, passage spaces are delineated, where the most disparate groups meet, the urban space is “the place of the other, simultaneously excluded and interwoven” (Lefebvre 2003:128), a place/space defined by differences and marginalized by forms of power. The presence of these substantial differences has an ambivalent role: on the one hand, as emerged from the interviews, it can make cohabitation more difficult, fueling conflicts or making the meaning attributed by the various groups to belonging to the neighbourhood too dissimilar; on the other hand, it could constitute a factor of social mix, which acts as a sign against the creation and stereotyping of a marginal identity. The two neighbourhoods analyzed emerge from the intersection and interactions of local social relations and broader social processes. We have seen how such constructions can imply different forms of conflict and mediation that affect not only the nature of physical spaces (and the meanings attributed to them) but also the physical and symbolic definition of their boundaries (Massey 1991), and the symbolic and practical use and significance, transforming places in spaces (Wacquant 2007). When public spaces become (or are perceived) as private ones, or belonging only to those which exercise forms of (economic, social) power, the friction between social groups increases. The different physical and symbolic uses of urban space by different social groups presuppose not only different forms of recognition and belonging but also different times and ways of living in the city. The observation in the neighbourhoods, and the analyses of the preceding paragraphs, not only indicate a constant process of enclaving/segregation/expulsion (Sassen 2014). As Massey wrote, it is difficult to define what we mean with the idea of “place” and the relationships we build up with them, especially in times of antagonism to newcomers and outsiders. If the economic dimension is a factor of differential accessibility, it is the other forms of capital (social, cultural, symbolic) that guide the different forms of identity aggregation. However,

If it is clear the assumption that people have multiple identities, then the same point can be made about places. Moreover, such multiple identities can either be a source of richness or a source of conflict, or both. (Massey 1991: 2).

Those forms of conflict that we encountered in the words of the interviewees take shape and substance, mainly because of interstitial spaces and in-between spaces. The fragmentation of identity spaces, the interconnection with micro-communities becomes one of the generative factors of conflict. The data collected in the two districts of Milan confirm the overcoming of a traditional comprehension of space in which human interactions have a negligible effect on its constitution. Mutualizing the distinction between place and space in Thrift (2003) it is observed that in the neighborhoods analyzed space is produced by the rhythms of life that reflect the stories of individuals, which give places a personal resonance. The social body of the city is the place of socio-spatial segregation and within it the spatial stigma is mapped. Alongside the social stigma that provides a definition of what are acceptable and unacceptable individuals and groups, the spatial stigma helps to form a powerful cognitive map of the places that are acceptable and unacceptable. Moreover, where border situations arise (as in the case of the Rogoredo neighborhoods) actors transform social space by producing on the one hand power relations and on the other hand conditions of liminality such as marginality and exclusion. Massey (1991) argues that only by widening our gaze, by restoring the depth of the global to the local, and by looking at disparities from a deeper perspective, can we go beyond micro-conflicts. In other words, only when space becomes firstly a place, a city, a state, a global network of relationships and connections (Castells 1996) can we find forms of realignment of conflicts, precisely because micro-borders, that space of differentiation (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013) and reproduction of inequality can become more labile, and conflict less close.